Misc. Campaign advice part II: The Plot Device Strikes Back

[Corinath]

Hey everyone!

Thank you to everyone who has been helping me with random questions I've been asking lately. It's been a big help! I've got some more random requests I'd love your collective expertise on, if you don't mind. :)

Background: I'm a semi-experienced DND player (one and a half years with 3.5e) playing with complete newbie players (who are best friends IRL). The players generally come from a contemporary video gaming background. This is my first time DMing a full campaign. I'm creating a custom world/plot for them to advance through based on the backgrounds/motivations they've given me, so no modules at all. The party is currently level 4.

1) I'm creating one of my BBEGs, an antagonistic (but not villainous) level 20 Illusionist wizard (who will obviously be no real threat to the group for mechanics reasons, but also legitimate plot reasons). Other than Silent Image for this build, what other spell would you pick for your Spell Mastery class ability?

2) I'm creating an NPC ally in the vein of Indiana Jones / Lara Croft / Nathan Drake. I've seen builds for such characters in 3.5 (with dungeon delver being the obvious prestige class), but don't know where I'd start for 5e. Thief Rogue seems close I suppose, but if you were to create one of these characters in 5e, how would you go about it? (Dungeon Delver feat being perhaps the most obvious pick here). This character would heavily recur and likely level with the group on the side, so all 20 levels are at your disposal. (I wish we did Iron Chef here.)

3) Can a vampire aspire to become a lich?

And now the most difficult question:

4) I'm experimenting with a sandbox style of play mixed with a Hitchcock-esque "Ticking bomb under the table" that presents a threat to my party if they don't move forward. To help keep them on track, I've presented them with a quest log they can access (We're on Roll20). If something comes up that is important (They discover major plot backstory), or unique (The entire works of Shakespeare makes an appearance, only it's written in Draconic by a Kobold), I add it to the log. I'd like to incentivize them to keep their plot and motivations close to the front of their mind (remember, first time DNDers) by experimenting rewarding them with experience for finishing a quest (ala Skyrim or Fallout 3/4). What amount of experience would make sense without being overblown? Should I assign a percentage of their next level up at the time the quest is received? If so what percentage? Should I assign it as a multiple of my average encounter's exp? Or should I think about a different method? Very outside of the box here.

Thanks for taking on this task and assisting me! I've had a blast DMing for this group of close friends and want to continue to give them an awesome game. :)

TL;DR

1) What are your favorite Spell Mastery Spells? What about if you were an Illusionist?
2) How would you build Indiana Jones?
3) Can vampires aspire to become lich's
4) If you were to award your players for completing what you considered quest lines, how would you go about discerning the amount of EXP to give them?

Cheers! :D

Edit: For those who haven't heard of the Hitchcock "Bomb under the table", it's a Hollywood fable about how he perceived audience tension. He supposedly said something to the effect of "Watch people talk over dinner about their day and it's incredibly boring. Show five seconds of someone putting a bomb under the table before hand, and you are on the edge of your seat". Orson Wells best and most obviously executed this with the opening sequence of his movie "A Touch Of Evil", where we literally watch a bomb get planted into a car of an unsuspecting couple and watch it drive for, like, three minutes into a valet, or something like that.

[Belac93]

1) What are your favorite Spell Mastery Spells? What about if you were an Illusionist?
2) How would you build Indiana Jones?
3) Can vampires aspire to become lich's
4) If you were to award your players for completing what you considered quest lines, how would you go about discerning the amount of EXP to give them?


1) I like Shield, pretty much a permanent +5 AC. Phantasmal force is pretty much mandatory for an illusionist.
2) Rogue 3 (thief) fighter 3 (battlemaster), then however you like.
3) I would say no, they are already undead.
4) Probably as much as a hard/deadly combat.

[SharkForce]

1) if you're looking for a more illusion-y option, mirror image is a non-concentration buff that you're likely to want to use multiple times. just to be clear though, you can change it on a short rest, so... whatever fits the situation. he's an illusionist, which means he likes illusions, but he's not an idiot.

2) mixture of fighter and rogue does work, but really, it's not that hard to make someone capable of doing most of what you want fairly easily.

3) you can aspire to be anything. whether it's probable or not is irrelevant to that; i can aspire to go live in the alpha centauri system tomorrow. doesn't mean it will happen. if you mean "can it happen", well, there might need to be a step in the middle somewhere where you get less undead for a bit. or maybe you just get a high enough CR and use true polymorph.

4) depends on the quest line. and how fast you want them to level up. i'm afraid this largely is going to need to be fully adjusted to your specific circumstances.

[Corinath]

1) I like Shield, pretty much a permanent +5 AC. Phantasmal force is pretty much mandatory for an illusionist.
2) Rogue 3 (thief) fighter 3 (battlemaster), then however you like.
3) I would say no, they are already undead.
4) Probably as much as a hard/deadly combat.

Shield is definitely pretty up there. Hadn't read Phantasmal Force till now, and that sounds pretty awesome, particularly since I can make it real if I want to.
Good call on the others! I hadn't thought about using the combat difficult EXP as a reward system. This is doubly weighted and might be a great solution as I currently tend toward deflating awarded EXP by having encounters more rife with lower level enemies, thus abusing the multiplier to make an encounter dangerous. (I told them I was doing this because we got to level 3 way too fast and we'd barely gotten out of the "starter" town. I still hadn't touched 98% of the plot with them. LoL)

Thanks!

[Corinath]

1) if you're looking for a more illusion-y option, mirror image is a non-concentration buff that you're likely to want to use multiple times. just to be clear though, you can change it on a short rest, so... whatever fits the situation. he's an illusionist, which means he likes illusions, but he's not an idiot.

2) mixture of fighter and rogue does work, but really, it's not that hard to make someone capable of doing most of what you want fairly easily.

3) you can aspire to be anything. whether it's probable or not is irrelevant to that; i can aspire to go live in the alpha centauri system tomorrow. doesn't mean it will happen. if you mean "can it happen", well, there might need to be a step in the middle somewhere where you get less undead for a bit. or maybe you just get a high enough CR and use true polymorph.

4) depends on the quest line. and how fast you want them to level up. i'm afraid this largely is going to need to be fully adjusted to your specific circumstances.

True. I thought it took 8 hours to change the spell though?

I hadn't thought of doing something like this with the vampire, and that makes it almost even better. Wants to be a lich, but sort of can't. LoL.

Yeah, that last one is tricky. I'm already throttling their exp back by abusing the encounter exp multipler and making hard encounters for low exp, but it might be nice to make quest lines be more incentivized by giving out more exp with them than normal. But yeah, it's super specific. Womp Womp.

Thanks!

[SharkForce]

True. I thought it took 8 hours to change the spell though?

I hadn't thought of doing something like this with the vampire, and that makes it almost even better. Wants to be a lich, but sort of can't. LoL.

Yeah, that last one is tricky. I'm already throttling their exp back by abusing the encounter exp multipler and making hard encounters for low exp, but it might be nice to make quest lines be more incentivized by giving out more exp with them than normal. But yeah, it's super specific. Womp Womp.

Thanks!

hmmm... you're correct on the 8 hours for spell changing.

i wouldn't worry too about gaining levels so fast early on... the first few levels go very quickly by design.

that being said, bigger groups of weaker creatures is typically going to yield more interesting fights than fewer big creatures; solo fights all too often boil down to reducing the effectiveness of a single enemy and then just quickly KOing them. a good mixture of one or two semi-tough enemies accompanied by weaker minions is more likely to prove interesting. action economy really makes purely solo monsters nearly impossible to use effectively...

[Corinath]

hmmm... you're correct on the 8 hours for spell changing.

i wouldn't worry too about gaining levels so fast early on... the first few levels go very quickly by design.

that being said, bigger groups of weaker creatures is typically going to yield more interesting fights than fewer big creatures; solo fights all too often boil down to reducing the effectiveness of a single enemy and then just quickly KOing them. a good mixture of one or two semi-tough enemies accompanied by weaker minions is more likely to prove interesting. action economy really makes purely solo monsters nearly impossible to use effectively...

I haven't adequately mixed the two yet. So far fights have either been lots of low level things, or one or two high level things. I'm still trying to find my stride with the system. The one time I designed one of these fights well I nearly TKO'd the party (but to be fair they were also playing really ineffectively, and admitted that afterward. LoL)

[Dark Ass4ssin 1]

As far as leveling up goes, you could eschew experience points and base it on quests done. this would give you more control on how powerful they are at different points as the "bomb" comes ever closer to exploding.

I personally like this method as it simplifies combat heavy exp rewarding, and discourages new player from picking up bad habits (murder hobo-ing, kill stealing, and doing trivial things just to hit next level). It also allows them to get exp based on completion, not murder, so they CAN persuade that goblin to let them pass without you having to give an arbitrary number of experience points for doing it.

[Corinath]

As far as leveling up goes, you could eschew experience points and base it on quests done. this would give you more control on how powerful they are at different points as the "bomb" comes ever closer to exploding.

I personally like this method as it simplifies combat heavy exp rewarding, and discourages new player from picking up bad habits (murder hobo-ing, kill stealing, and doing trivial things just to hit next level). It also allows them to get exp based on completion, not murder, so they CAN persuade that goblin to let them pass without you having to give an arbitrary number of experience points for doing it.

I hadn't though of linking quest completion strictly to leveling up. That's interesting. In a way I think I'm splitting the difference. Encounters still matter a bit, but quest completion will give you a larger chunk of EXP than just what I happen to dole out via combat when things need a change up.

I've already been DMing my group for about three or four months and they, luckily, are more about the RP of it than they are the meta of it, so, other than the one evil aligned character who virtually did murder a hobo once (He pissed her off), they wouldn't do trivial things. I also have a generally very creative group, so I do award EXP for peacefully diffusing life threatening or dangerous situations. They once talked their way past the first few guards of a bandit strong hold, and, on top of it, convinced them they were a group of contractors that were hired to look at the working conditions in the stronghold and, as such, deserved to be given an escorted tour of the facilities. Then they illusioned themselves as their tour guides and walked around freely for awhile. LoL. So they got two encounters worth of EXP for that, cause that was funny as hell. :)

[SharkForce]

i think you're misunderstanding where murderhobos comes from :P

it isn't that adventurers murder hobos... it's that they *are* hobos. they don't have any home or fixed base of operations. they basically just wander from place to place, looking for work, which work frequently consists of killing things that other people find objectionable.

[Corinath]

i think you're misunderstanding where murderhobos comes from :P

it isn't that adventurers murder hobos... it's that they *are* hobos. they don't have any home or fixed base of operations. they basically just wander from place to place, looking for work, which work frequently consists of killing things that other people find objectionable.

OH. LoL. This makes more sense now. :D

And also casts things in a somewhat disparaging light. O.O

[gfishfunk]

1) What are your favorite Spell Mastery Spells? What about if you were an Illusionist?
2) How would you build Indiana Jones?
3) Can vampires aspire to become lich's
4) If you were to award your players for completing what you considered quest lines, how would you go about discerning the amount of EXP to give them?

1. For a level 20 antagonist villain-not-a-villain, I would worry about building it when they get closer. Before then, the wizard is NEVER there, and is always creating illusions to represent him/herself in conjunction with scrying. Just my two cents.

2. Fighter + Rogue + Whip. Treat the whip like it has mage hand at a 15' range. WHA-PA! Grab something.

3. Sure. Why not? Maybe this vampire has been experimenting to make the process more viable. Maybe the players and all their lore says that it is not possible -- to the best of their knowledge.

4. Sure! I use roll20 and I write 'quests' a la Fallout series that pretty much just collects factoids and objectives - many of which are player driven. This keeps things organized fairly easily. So 'completing a quest' can easily give one medium encounter worth of experience.

[Beleriphon]

And also casts things in a somewhat disparaging light. O.O

Puts on snooty British accent, "Rather the point sir, rather the point."

[Kurt Kurageous]

I currently tend toward deflating awarded EXP by having encounters more rife with lower level enemies, thus abusing the multiplier to make an encounter dangerous. (I told them I was doing this because we got to level 3 way too fast and we'd barely gotten out of the "starter" town. I still hadn't touched 98% of the plot with them. LoL)

I believe you will discover that level progression slows WAY down after 3rd level, and it's my goal to get the players to third within the second session at the latest. I have written three starter campaigns (two for solos) for just this purpose. If the only way they can gain XP is combat, then that's all that matters. I've liberally use the minor milestone xp as the minimum xp gained for every single room cleared in a dungeon crawl, and by the time the XP is divided up by the party (four to six), its not super impressive. After a YEAR of playing weekly, my average level is five...and I'm considering per session leveling to get that to ten.